


give us no shade

by inconceivable



Category: SKAM (TV)
Genre: Character Study, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-26
Updated: 2017-01-26
Packaged: 2018-09-20 01:37:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9469667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inconceivable/pseuds/inconceivable
Summary: There's a space between thinking and doing. Here is what Isak thinks: that he spent a year living there.





	

**Author's Note:**

> just a short character study/pov exercise to help me get a handle on this kid before i dive into something longer. set ambiguously toward the end of and in reflection on s3. title from a lord chesterfield quote that has stuck with me since one of my high school history teachers had it hanging on her wall.

There’s a space between thinking and doing. Big enough to hold a star, every star; a universe. Small enough to make you feel like you can’t breathe.

Here is what Isak thinks: that he spent a year living there. Maybe more, if he’s honest. He wasn’t, for a while, so long that now it still feels odd to think he could be. That he is, or that he’s getting there. Getting back. Finding those pieces of himself he dropped along the way, a breadcrumb trail to lead his own return.

A year, or maybe more. Winter to winter, his breath fogging up in the cold air and Eva’s words hanging colder, solid, a condensed and frozen weight. _I feel like I don’t know you anymore_ , and she wasn’t the only one. _I feel like I don’t know you_ , and didn’t that turn out to be the summary of his year, the punchline every time he looked in the mirror, _it keeps getting funnier every time I see it_. It keeps getting more true, at least.

(Has Even seen that one? Has he seen it enough to quote it? Has Isak been seeing Even enough to pick up on that habit?)

There are things you expect to go through, as a teenager. Fights and breakups, losing friends, losing sleep to parties every weekend. First kisses. First heartbreaks. Smoking up in bathtubs and shooting the shit about like, life, man, and you and me and all of us here, and what’s the _point_ , you know? Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen candles on a birthday cake and no closer to the point, but here is what Isak knows:

Fifteen and his parents fight every night, and the worst nights are the silent ones because at least when they shout they’re acknowledging each other. Sixteen and they don’t fight anymore but that’s because his dad left, and his mom--well. Sixteen and maybe there’s more of his dad in Isak than he realized because soon enough Isak is gone too. Seventeen and no one fights except he kind of wishes that they would, that his dad would stomp all over the eggshells they’ve been treading and shout until he had to listen. Seventeen and all Isak wants is the acknowledgment, the moment where someone says _Hey, it’s all been real hard on you, hasn’t it?_ and he gets to say _Like you wouldn’t fucking believe_. Seventeen and all he wants is someone to give him a reason to finally pin himself down and scrape himself clean.

Here is what else Isak thinks: that dropping, maybe, wasn’t the right word to use. Drop, as in to release, as in to let go. Let fall away. Maybe some pieces did, the superficial and the shallow ones, the ones he just plain outgrew. But maybe others he didn’t. Some things he buried, half in the earth and half under snow. The sharp things, the things that cut too close. The points he wasn’t ready to get closer to.

Winter to winter, and there’s time in between. A space there, a season. A thaw and a growth. A heat that pulls things to the surface like blisters, painful and raw. You don’t get blisters from thought, is the thing. They come from the act, the steps and the handholds, the not letting go. The decision to hold your own hands to the flame. The decision to keep them there, even after it starts to sear.

Certain things sear into place. Certain things stick. Certain things you leave half-buried because you want to find them again. Enough time dulls any edge, and enough distance makes you want to revisit it. See if maybe it won’t cut the same anymore. The memory of a park bench, last winter’s conversation there ( _I feel like I don’t know you_ ) and this one’s ( _I’ll give you a hint_ ). Maybe he was right the first time. Maybe he has been dropping things all along. Seeds and shards, hints and breadcrumbs; a trail he had to walk all the way around to find his way back.

Here is what Isak thinks, in the thick of things: that things move in circles, and thoughts most of all. That circles loop, around and around and around, and will until they don’t. That every end to a circle comes only from a choice to break it, and that every choice forms a new space, a new universe to sit down in and inhabit for a while.

He’s found a universe in Even. He’s found thousands. A score are clutched in Even’s hands, a dozen catch in his smile, a few hundred hang off his eyelashes. There’s one in every place on Even’s body Isak has kissed, and countless more waiting to be found in all the places he wants to. Of all of them, the want is the universe he lives in now--the hunger for touch, the curiosity of taste, the _please more_ , the burning unknown.

Isak knows Even, or he is coming to know him, as much as he is coming to know himself in all his parts. The part that thinks. The part that speaks without thinking. The part that listens. The part that wants. The part that loves. The part that fears, and the part that is steadily learning not to.

Here is the biggest thing he has learned: that there are things in this universe to be afraid of, but none of those are in him.

And here are the smaller, consequent ones: that he can want Even, and want him unabashedly. That he can fall asleep beside Even at night and kiss him in the morning. That he can reach for Even’s hand as they walk and Even will always, always give it back. That he can spend time enough with Even to learn his favorite movies, to pick up Even’s habits and pass on some of his own. That he can look at Even and think _how happy I am to have met you_. That he can say that, if he chooses, and see in Even’s smile its effect.

Here is what Isak thinks. And here is what he is starting to do.

**Author's Note:**

> find me on [tumblr](http://ravenclawisak.tumblr.com). thanks for reading!


End file.
